Need a way to scale a font to fit a rectangle

Question

I just wrote some code to scale a font to fit within (the length of) a rectangle. It starts at 18 width and iterates down until it fits.

This seems horribly inefficient, but I can't find a non-looping way to do it. This line is for labels in a game grid that scales, so I can't see a work-around solution (wrapping, cutting off and extending past the rectangle are all unacceptable).

It's actually pretty quick, I'm doing this for hundreds of rectangles and it's fast enough to just slow it down a touch.

If nobody comes up with anything better, I'll just load the starting guess from a table (so that it's much closer than 18) and use this--except for the lag it works great.

public Font scaleFont(String text, Rectangle rect, Graphics g, Font pFont) {
    float nextTry=18.0f;
    Font font=pFont;

    while(x > 4) {                             
            font=g.getFont().deriveFont(nextTry);
            FontMetrics fm=g.getFontMetrics(font);
            int width=fm.stringWidth(text);
            if(width <= rect.width)
                return font;
            nextTry*=.9;            
    }
    return font;
}

Answer 1

semi-psuedo code:

public Font scaleFont(String text, Rectangle rect, Graphics g, Font pFont) {
    float fontSize = 20.0f;
    Font font = pFont;

    font = g.getFont().deriveFont(fontSize);
    int width = g.getFontMetrics(font).stringWidth(text);
    fontSize = (rect.width / width ) * fontSize;
    return g.getFont().deriveFont(fontSize);
}

i'm not sure why you pass in pFont as it's not used...

Answer 2

You could use interpolation search:

public static Font scaleFont(String text, Rectangle rect, Graphics g, Font pFont) {
    float min=0.1f;
    float max=72f;
    float size=18.0f;
    Font font=pFont;

    while(max - min <= 0.1) {
        font = g.getFont().deriveFont(size);
        FontMetrics fm = g.getFontMetrics(font);
        int width = fm.stringWidth(text);
        if (width == rect.width) {
            return font;
        } else {
            if (width < rect.width) {
                min = size;
            } else {
                max = size;
            }
            size = Math.min(max, Math.max(min, size * (float)rect.width / (float)width));
        }
    }
    return font;
}

Answer 3

Change all width variables to float instead of int for better result.

public static Font scaleFontToFit(String text, int width, Graphics g, Font pFont)
{
    float fontSize = pFont.getSize();
    float fWidth = g.getFontMetrics(pFont).stringWidth(text);
    if(fWidth <= width)
        return pFont;
    fontSize = ((float)width / fWidth) * fontSize;
    return pFont.deriveFont(fontSize);
}

Answer 4

private Font scaleFont ( String text, Rectangle rect, Graphics gc )
{
    final float fMinimumFont = 0.1f;
    float fMaximumFont = 1000f;

    /* Use Point2d.Float to hold ( font, width of font in pixels ) pairs. */
    Point2D.Float lowerPoint = new Point2D.Float ( fMinimumFont, getWidthInPixelsOfString ( text, fMinimumFont, gc ) );
    Point2D.Float upperPoint = new Point2D.Float ( fMaximumFont, getWidthInPixelsOfString ( text, fMaximumFont, gc ) );
    Point2D.Float midPoint = new Point2D.Float ();

    for ( int i = 0; i < 50; i++ )
    {
        float middleFont = ( lowerPoint.x + upperPoint.x ) / 2;

        midPoint.setLocation ( middleFont, getWidthInPixelsOfString ( text, middleFont, gc ) );

        if ( midPoint.y >= rect.getWidth () * .95 && midPoint.y <= rect.getWidth () )
            break;
        else if ( midPoint.y < rect.getWidth () )
            lowerPoint.setLocation ( midPoint );
        else if ( midPoint.y > rect.getWidth () )
            upperPoint.setLocation ( midPoint );
    }

    fMaximumFont = midPoint.x;

    Font font = gc.getFont ().deriveFont ( fMaximumFont );

    /* Now use Point2d.Float to hold ( font, height of font in pixels ) pairs. */
    lowerPoint.setLocation ( fMinimumFont, getHeightInPixelsOfString ( text, fMinimumFont, gc ) );
    upperPoint.setLocation ( fMaximumFont, getHeightInPixelsOfString ( text, fMaximumFont, gc ) );

    if ( upperPoint.y < rect.getHeight () )
        return font;

    for ( int i = 0; i < 50; i++ )
    {
        float middleFont = ( lowerPoint.x + upperPoint.x ) / 2;

        midPoint.setLocation ( middleFont, getHeightInPixelsOfString ( text, middleFont, gc ) );

        if ( midPoint.y >= rect.getHeight () * .95 && midPoint.y <= rect.getHeight () )
            break;
        else if ( midPoint.y < rect.getHeight () )
            lowerPoint.setLocation ( midPoint );
        else if ( midPoint.y > rect.getHeight () )
            upperPoint.setLocation ( midPoint );
    }

    fMaximumFont = midPoint.x;

    font = gc.getFont ().deriveFont ( fMaximumFont );

    return font;
}


private float getWidthInPixelsOfString ( String str, float fontSize, Graphics gc )
{
    Font font = gc.getFont ().deriveFont ( fontSize );

    return getWidthInPixelsOfString ( str, font, gc );
}

private float getWidthInPixelsOfString ( String str, Font font, Graphics gc )
{
    FontMetrics fm = gc.getFontMetrics ( font );
    int nWidthInPixelsOfCurrentFont = fm.stringWidth ( str );

    return (float) nWidthInPixelsOfCurrentFont;
}


private float getHeightInPixelsOfString ( String string, float fontSize, Graphics gc )
{
    Font font = gc.getFont ().deriveFont ( fontSize );

    return getHeightInPixelsOfString ( string, font, gc );
}

private float getHeightInPixelsOfString ( String string, Font font, Graphics gc )
{
    FontMetrics metrics = gc.getFontMetrics ( font );
    int nHeightInPixelsOfCurrentFont = (int) metrics.getStringBounds ( string, gc ).getHeight () - metrics.getDescent () - metrics.getLeading ();

    return (float) nHeightInPixelsOfCurrentFont * .75f;
}

Answer 5

You can improve the efficiency using a binary search pattern - high/low with some granularity - either 1, 0.5 or 0.25 points.

For example, guess at 18, too high? Move to 9, too Low? 13.5, too low? 15.75, too high? 14!

Answer 6

A different, obvious way would be to have the text pre-drawn on a bitmap, and then shrink the bitmap to fit the rectangle; but, because of hand-crafted font design and hinting etc., finding the right font size produces the best-looking (although perhaps not the quickest) result.